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quinta-feira, 4 de setembro de 2014

Apologies for my absence, I am around, just not writing unfortunately.

However, I thought of treating you to a new short story! :D

This is a completely new story, not a translation and, for now, only available in English :)

I hope you enjoy it :D

P.S.- Sorry its not part of this year's theme

Chased

‘Where am I’ I
thought. Everything was a blur. Couldn’t remember where I was, how I’d gotten
there or what had happened.

Looking around, I
managed to make out a field, just at the exit of a forest. ‘Hum…’ I had nothing
with me except for my clothes. Decided to look around but just as I started to stand
up, I heard someone scream behind me, from deep in the forest. I turned around
and spotted someone running, attempting to get to a clearing in the forest.
Then another person seemed to be chasing the first with a shotgun at hand.
Suddenly a shot was fired and the man running was put down like some kind of
animal.

‘What the fuck is
going on?’ I whispered as I crouched, out of the line of sight of the psycho,
but in the meanwhile, another person with a shotgun joined the party.

I had to get away from
them. My heart was racing and my head was thoughtless. It only screamed ‘Run!’
at me. Dizziness started to invade me, but I had to stay alert. Since they were
roaming around the forest, my only option was to go out into the open field and
that’s where I headed.

Half crouched, half
standing, I staggered my way across the tall grassed field. As far as I could
tell, there was no one around, and from the seagulls, I must have been close to
the sea so I just headed towards to seagulls. For a moment, I managed to calm
down which allowed me to think, but I still had no idea where I was. Nothing
was familiar. As far as I could see I was in an open field with a few mounds
and a tall hill. To my back, there was the forest with the psychotic people.
And, perhaps ahead, there was sea? The seagulls seemed to head that way, so
that was my best bet.

As I started to head
to forwards, when I heard a metallic voice shouting ‘I found you!’ coming from
the top of the tall hill. A woman was standing there with a sniper gun pointing
right at me. ‘What was wrong with those people?!’ She fired a shot which just
about missed me. I ran for it, zigzagging through the field, half crouched,
half standing. Another shot was fired, like lightning. I stumbled across a
slope, running, rolling and staggering until I reached a cliff with a small,
rocky and steep path which lead down to a beach… Finally. Carefully I began
following a path, but in the distance I heard what seemed another one asking
her ‘where I was’ and that ‘I would make a fine prize’. The terror that filled
me made me slip on a little stone and slide down to the bottom, landing on the
rocky part of the beach.

Blood, bruises and
cuts covered my body, especially my back. I could feel my t-shirt soaking. It
had ripped slightly with the fall. ‘Ah shit…’ I ran across the beach towards a
boat which appeared to be docked not far from where I was, when a man grabbed
me and pulled me in to a shallow cave.

‘Shhhh’ he whispered,
covering my mouth. Above us I could hear them
talking in very Basic English to each other, ordering to gather more.

‘Follow me’ he pointed
to the boat I was heading to just moments ago. By his appearance, he seemed to
also be running away from them. We
kept close to the cliff walls, following the shore line, until we reached the
boat. There, the man helped me in and we set sail, paddling through the waves.

Whilst at sea, the
terror felt earlier seemed to ease, and calmness started settle in. The
nightmare, that once I had found myself in, was now a distant memory.

“So you also got
caught, hein?” The man chuckled. ‘Get caught?’ I was never caught, what was he
on about?

“You have no idea
what’s happening, do you? They have been kidnapping people and sticking them in
‘ere, in these islands, in the middle of nowhere. There are four islands and
the things that were following us are robots programmed to kill the humans. New
sport nowadays, some 31st century were in, hein?” He chuckled again,
but although he seemed amused, I could tell the sadness in his eyes. “I’m
Chuck, by the way. I run the boat service between islands, they kept me since
they couldn’t get the robots to do it.”

We were now
approaching a little port with a few houses, amongst which, there was a little
café that looked quite busy. We docked the boat and entered the café. It was
odd the amount of people there.

“This is a safe house,
there are a few of these around. These are places for the hunted to rest, eat
and recover, otherwise it would be too easy! But stay too long and the ‘neutral
state’ you are in will be withdrawn, allowing the robots to get you.” He
explained as we sat down at a table with comfortable chairs. I looked around
and there were a few people sleeping, others terrified, searching all around.
One elderly woman was sitting at one of the tables across us, far too relaxed,
drinking a cup of tea, whilst reading a newspaper.

“You feel it too,
don’t you?” he said, slightly worried, but still amused.

And yes I could feel
it – we were being watched. “Yes” I said to him “Are we being spied on?”

He sipped his drink,
which had just been delivered by a very stereotypical American dinner waitress,
too stereotypical actually…

“Something has been
going on in the past few weeks, the safe houses aren’t ‘safe’ anymore. I think
I now understand why. We’re going to head to another one built by a little
community which has been a fairly good hiding place. It’s not too far.” And
with that he handed me a handgun. Told me it was for protection. One blow to
the head and they would be gone. It made me wonder, if it was so easy to kill
them, then how had there been no survivors, or even people escaping? Surely
this place couldn’t be too far from a mainland…

“Right, you go first,
I’ll follow. Keep your eyes out for it.”
I sat up and made my way out of the café. My heart was beating like crazy… I
didn’t know what to do in case I got followed, I had never shot a firearm
before, let alone killed anything.

Just as I exited it, I
heard a chair scrape the floor and a newspaper being folded. ‘Shit!’ As soon as
I was past the café, I made a run for the bushes, they seemed to lead to lead
into a forest. I could hear the steps behind me speeding up as I began to run.
Terror filled me as soon as the footsteps became muffled and all I could hear
was the rustling of the bushes brushing against me. ‘Shit, shit, shit…’ my
brain couldn’t think, too terrified to do anything but run, run forwards, run
for my life.

As I started to make
my way through the forest, a little wood cabin began to form among the
vegetation. Suddenly, I was grabbed. I tried to scream but no noise came out of
my mouth, I was too scared to scream. I struggled for release till I heard a
voice saying ‘It’s me, don’t shoot.’ It was Chuck. I turned around to face him
and pushed him away, but just as I did, I saw he had blood running down the
side of his face and a huge cut in his head. His blue t-shirt was now
splattered with blood and he held a machete in his hand, also dripping with
blood. “Turned out the person following you was a male robot, sat in a table
next to the old lady!” he whispered as we made our way through the forest.

A few minutes later,
we reached the shelter. A few people were there happily chatting along. I guess
this would be slightly safer than the café, for everyone to be so relaxed…

“Hey guys” Chuck said
to some of them as he wondered off in their direction. I felt I needed a little
break from all this stress and entered the cabin where the front room was
empty. I sat down in one of the benches there, when someone further inside the
cabin said ‘hello’. I followed it and its origin was in one of the bedrooms. A
girl laid in the bed.

“Hey, I see you are
new around here! I’m Lucy, welcome to the cabin.” She said as she greeted me.
She explained to me, again, what was going on and added that she was stuck in
that bed because she was paralysed in the legs. Suddenly she stopped and became
terrified.

“Oh crap! Quickly,
hide yourself in that cupboard and cover yourself with this blanket.” She
handed me a blue blanket and a sickle. “Use that to fight back, just behead
them. It isn’t too hard.”

I did what she said
and just as I covered myself with the blanket, screams, coming from outside,
invaded the cabin and robotic voices shouted numbers. I could hear one entering
the cabin. I could see its shadow through the blanket and held my breath as it
went past me. A soft beeping indicated he was scanning the place, yet, somehow
it did not kill the girl. But I was too busy panicking to focus any further on
it as he closed up on me and then headed towards the door.

I summed up some
strength and, even though I felt extremely sick from the nerves and
light-headed, I decided to make a run for it, surely it wouldn’t be too hard
killing it, it was a bunch of metal. I grabbed the sickle and gently took the
blanket off me. Then, I sneaked up on it and, closing my eyes, in a swift
motion, wrapped the sickle around its throat and pulled back, beheading it. But
what followed was not what I expected. A human looking head fell on the floor,
wires laid on the floor as well as blood. Soft tissue and metal together.
Horror struck me, when they said robots I just assumed they were a pile of
human-looking metal… not this… I walked past the thing and got outside. It was
a bloodbath! A scene truly out of a horror movie, it was gruesome and bile
climbed up my throat. Bodies of either party laid in the ground of a place that
was once a peaceful and happy.

I could see two robots
looking around, unarmed, so I sneaked up on one and, again, beheaded it. Tears
fell down my face, I couldn’t bear it. Even the metal cracking was too real.

This caught the
attention of the other and so I had to run. I climbed up a little hill on the
back of the cabin. I went as fast as I could, but I could hear the footsteps
getting closer and closer.

I panicked for a
second and tripped over a branch on the ground, landing on my face.